A real custom look

[duderuud]

Hello designers and coders,

I've got a question that's on my mind quite some time...is it possible to create a real custom look for Xenforo? No offence to anyone but pretty much all the XF boards look the same except from different colours/fonts and icons. Let me rephrase: In about 3 seconds you can see a board is an XF board.

So is it so much work to change the looks entirely or is it technically impossible? Let's say I wanna have a design that looks like this, is that possible? (That's just an example, it's just for an idea)

 

[Nasr]

You are only limited by your CSS abilities. Anything, almost, is possible as long as you know what you are doing in CSS.

 

[Forsaken]

Hello designers and coders,

I've got a question that's on my mind quite some time...is it possible to create a real custom look for Xenforo? No offence to anyone but pretty much all the XF boards look the same except from different colours/fonts and icons. Let me rephrase: In about 3 seconds you can see a board is an XF board.

So is it so much work to change the looks entirely or is it technically impossible? Let's say I wanna have a design that looks like this, is that possible? (That's just an example, it's just for an idea)

Customizing it to look similar to that style wouldn't be difficult (It would require custom javascript coding if you want effects like the navigation done properly).


There are a few reasons why most styles aren't as customized as that, the main of which is that the more customized a style is, the more the cost will be. Another reason is that XenForo has a design that works well, and promotes user interaction which increases usage of the forum overall (At least for most forums I've seen).

There really aren't many limitations with XenForo that cannot be addressed by a small accompanying add-on (For extending minor things) or with additional javascript (Like in your example). Most things can easily be changed through the CSS, and as a last resort HTML.

You are only limited by your CSS abilities. Anything, almost, is possible as long as you know what you are doing in CSS.

That isn't true for his example, it would require a lot of editing to make it different enough from XenForo to fit what he wants, as well as additional javascript.

 

[duderuud]

Thanks guys. So it's more a financial thing then a technical one. But I haven't ever seen even one real custimized XF forum....is it that expensive?

 

[dtmcl]

Thanks guys. So it's more a financial thing then a technical one. But I haven't ever seen even one real custimized XF forum....is it that expensive?

Well the time and effort needed to create something like what you want vs. a more traditional look wouldn't be worth it to most people, unless they were being paid handsomely

 

[duderuud]

And can someone here quote, I'm curious about the price range...$500? $2500?

 

[Forsaken]

And can someone here quote, I'm curious about the price range...$500? $2500?

Minimum of $1000, more than likely more. I didn't take a long enough look at the example, and chances are you'd want something different from what was shown which could either increase or decrease the price.

The biggest issue with doing a whole overhaul of the XenForo style is that you risk losing quite a bit of usability and user interaction depending on what you want. One of the big benefits of XenForo is the increase in user interaction, which is why most styles leave it mostly in tact and style over it. Also the style isn't all that bad by itself, so it still looks unique, even if you can tell it is a XenForo style.

 

[Shelley]

Thanks guys. So it's more a financial thing then a technical one. But I haven't ever seen even one real custimized XF forum....is it that expensive?

It's not that it's expensive as forsaken stated. Xenforo has a layout that works well and usability taking into account many people will go for a custom (changed layout look) because it's different but that doesn't necessary mean it's better and in most cases it's not better and in most cases usability is thrown out of the window just to get achieve a layout change.

Don't get me wrong, there's some areas in xenforo that can do with a layout change (profiles for one) sub forum structure (search areas that consist with tabs) even the (in my opinion) the redundant quick navigation area. But as a whole xenforo as a good layout that can still be customised differently so it stands out which most of that can be achieve with css and very little html editing. In some case javascript knowledge may be required for some stuff.

Looking at your example it wouldn't take much time nor effort to achieve but since I don't do custom style jobs I can't possibly give you a quote.

 

[0xym0r0n]

Other than having a nice navigation on the left I'm not really sure I see anything super awesome there. Basic forum structure with another pretty coat on lol.

Could easily insert links on the right side (default side) of xenforo. Get some add-ons to make the custom latest content for each section. Use css to style those...

I'm just going based off the looks rather than functions of each page. You were talking about a custom style, so I gave my feedback on that. If you hire someone to customize some add-ons for xenporta you could easily achieve the front page content.

So it is a matter of money and I do believe the previous $1000 (+/- depending on exact needs) price range is sufficient enough. If you are good at research and html/css, the you could probably do all of this yourself.